Short, Sad Life
by Emily-Of-Midgard
Summary: "Do you need me to spell it out for you? It's been a long time. Even you, a moron, should have been able to figure that out." Light hint of Chell/Wheatley.


"You can't even apologize right."

If she had a mouth, she would have frowned down at the core lying in the corner.

"You were equipped with an Aperture Science Core Clock, why didn't you use it?"

Silence.

"Do you need me to spell it out for you? It's been a long time. Even you, a moron, should have been able to figure that out."

She sighed an annoyed sigh, and turned away from the core to a monitor, observing a test subject. She focused her energy on provoking the test subject, who was so very different from _her. _This test subject lacked the flair and the stubbornness to really excel. In her old days of testing, this guy would have seen normal, but in comparison to Chell, he was nothing.

The test subject's portals were a bit off and with a blood-curdling scream, he fell into the acid.

Well, now he and Chell finally had something in common.

They were both dead.

"I-I didn't think it was that long...I thought..."

"She was twenty-seven when she left here." GLaDOS said, lacking any emotion. "I told you it's been a long time, core, eighty years. She was a hundred and seven and still hanging on." At this GLaDOS gave a humorless laugh.

"She wanted to take me with her when she went. How stupid of her. I'm going to live forever."

Wheatley did not reply.

"Eighty years you were in space with that corrupted core, and meanwhile she lived. She forgot you." GLaDOS knew that was not true, Chell had never forgotten the moron. Whenever Chell left Aperture after one of her few visits, GLaDOS' cameras would always catch Chell staring up at the sky, as if she could catch a glimpse of her...whatever she considered Wheatley anymore.

"I...I wished I could take it all back." Wheatley said. "I truly do. While I was stranded in space, all I would do was think about the ways I would make it up to her. While I hurtled to earth, all I could think about was seeing her again. And now she's gone."

"She got married, you know." GLaDOS said off-handedly, rubbing salt into Wheatley's wounds. "A scientist." 

Silence.

"I was never madder at that girl." 

"Why?"

"He worked for Black Mesa. Caroline's file almost deleted itself from the shame." GLaDOS said calmly, as if it was not strange at all. As if she had not told her to stay far away from science.

"Black...Mesa." Wheatley said, shocked at Chell's taste in men.

"They had a family. They were the people at the funeral; remember we watched it from a satellite?" That had been painful for Wheatley. "Her two children and grandchildren. The daughter's name was Gladys, after me." GLaDOS had no idea why she was telling him this, all she knew was that a strange feeling was coming from the area of her hardrive where Caroline was.

"They also had a son."

Silence.

"She didn't hate you."

"Yes she did." Wheatley said, his eyelids lowered in shame. "She hated me; bossy, horrible me."

"No she didn't." GLaDOS said, picking the Intellegence Damphing Sphere up from his handles using her claw. She dangled him in front of her 'face'. "Why would she name her son 'Wheatley' if she hated you so much?"

For one split second, she saw his optic widen in shock, and she also saw something in his eyes. Guilt. All too human guilt.

Suddenly, she felt him go slightly limp, and his optic darkened. GLaDOS recoiled in shock and plugged him in so she could go through his files.

He was gone. Wheatley has shut himself down. He was dead.

GLaDOS stared at him for a few moments and disconnected him. She knew this would be a bad idea, but she would send Orange and Blue to go to Chell's grave, dig over it and put the now lifeless core in the hole. She rested him on the ground and wished it was only that easy for her.

AN- Oh hi. So how are you guys? BECAUSE I'M A MORON.

I accidentally uninstalled my copy of Microsoft Word, so that means I have no more spell checker. Ergo, my quality of writing has gone from a one to a negative five. I'm using an online spell checker until I can find some other sort of word processing then WordPad.

So apart from my stupidity, I've wanted to write something like this ever since I got into Portal. I've been toying with the idea of Wheatley crashing back to Earth after a very long time, either not realizing it or not worrying about it, going to finally apologize to Chell and finding out that she just died of old age, or has been dead for some time. So this fail fic came out of it.

~Huntress, who is debating another name change.


End file.
